


familiar ground

by nutzone



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, Established Relationship, M/M, Mild Angst, baze is worried sick and chirrut is a daredevil-the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 12:21:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9234752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nutzone/pseuds/nutzone
Summary: "Do you enjoy hurting me?" Baze asks quietly.Chirrut drags his bloody finger across baze's palm, tracing the familiar callused plains. he doesn't answer.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i like to think baze is oftentimes very worried about chirrut, who understands, but is also worried about baze and wants to keep him from harm

"Do you enjoy hurting me?" Baze asks quietly.

Chirrut drags his bloody finger across baze's palm, tracing the familiar callused plains. he doesn't answer.

They are sitting on stools opposite each other inside a tent in Jedha city. There’s a wet, bloodied rag and a broken basin between them, spilling in a quick but quiet pattern of “drip-drip-drip” that fills the air between them.

"That's why you do this" Baze continues, voice growing more hectic as he squeezes the wet rag over Chirrut's hand, "it has to be, right? Because I don’t what else could it possibly be."

"I don't enjoy hurting you" Chirrut says numbly, mostly just to say anything. He doesn't know how to fix this, how to comfort Baze like he needs.

"Then why are you so cruel?- And yes, cruel, Chirrut. It's what you are. You give me everything with one hand, then suddenly threaten to take it from me with the other. Ah, yes Baze, the ox", he raises his voice, as if suddenly talking to a crowd, "the fool, let's all laugh at him, why don't we? Always expecting his husband at home, when he runs off on suicidal quests- he'll be at home waiting, piecing his chirrut together when he returns, and every time there shall be less and less of him coming home until at last the stormtroopers send Baze his head through the post!"

"Don't talk like that!" Chirrut exclaims, "don't say that."

"Then what do you want me to say!"  Baze stands up and throws the rag to the floor with a smack, "what do you want me to say when you keep rushing into foolish battles, not at all caring how i will feel when you-if you- I-" he takes a shaky breath and runs his hand over his face.

Baze is still, breathing heavily and with tightly shut eyes. It’s a habit he’s had since he was a child, Chirrut knows; when thoughts and emotions become too intense and his tongue refuses to sort his words out, he needs some time to organize the sentences in his head, more time than other people. Baze was always less of a man of words, and Chirrut knows all too well how troublesome Baze often finds verbal communication- that is why, when Baze finally decides to let out the thoughts in his head, Chirrut is silent, listening to every word with reverence normally reserved for sermons and prophecies. 

“If you die”, Baze exhales, finally, kneeling beside where Chirrut sits in front of the murky water basin, “what do you think is going to happen to me, hmm.”

Chirrut inhales. 

“We’re the only ones left now. It was always the two of us”, Baze says, “You and I against the rest, I was always at your back. You’re the only one I have Chirrut, and I…”

Baze’s voice is impossibly small in the last words, and Chirrut wants so desperately to comfort him, to say something when Baze’s hand clenches his robe and he presses his face against Chirrut’s thigh; but he knows he can’t-shouldn’t, rather. Not Yet.

“I love you”, Baze whispers, “why are you breaking my heart, chirrut” 

It was as if those words broke a spell in him, something that had kept him from speaking or acting. He was a goblet in which baze had poured his feelings into, and now full to the point of spilling, he can’t contain himself anymore, throwing his arms around baze and falling to the floor. His hands are torn and bloody, and baze’s coarse hair sticks to them as he caresses his neck, but he doesn’t care, he couldn’t care if the skin of his fingers was ripped clean from his bones, not when baze is before him like this, not when his whole world is crying openly. 

“I’m sorry”, he whispers into Baze’s neck, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Baze sobs, and Chirrut kisses his cheek, “you know I have to do this, baze, you know I can’t let them-”

“But why won’t you tell me where you go! Why do you run off without saying anything- i don’t know where you are- and then you come back, hurt, and I’m just standing there like a fool, without knowing what happened or where you went-”

“I didn’t want to worry you”, Chirrut mumbles, “I know, after yesterday, you-”

“Didn’t want to worry me!” Baze repeats hysterically, “didn’t want to- oh you, you really did well there, didn’t you! coming home, bloodied, saying ‘hi baze’ as if your fingers didn’t look like they were falling off!”

Chirrut laughs, weak and wet, “I never said i had good foresight.”

“Bullshit. You make a living out of your foresight” Baze says, and lays his head on Chirrut’s shoulder, his finger tracing circles on Chirrut’s back, “...Chirrut.”

“Yes?” he says quietly.

“Please. Please. Don’t- don’t-”, Baze sighs, “You make me so frustrated, I forget how to say it. Don’t run away like that again. If you see imperial troopers, come to me. Tell me, and we’ll fight them off together.”

“You still have wounds from the last time you tried to protect me”, Chirrut murmurs, “how can I willingly subject you to something like that again?”

Baze growls, “I don’t care. I won’t let you fight alone.”

“I can handle myself just fine.”

“Your hands beg to differ.” baze sighs, “how would you like it if I ran away to god knows where and then came back bloodied?”

“...You forget, you did, once. For a good couple of years, Baze.” Chirrut says and lets go of baze a bit to cup his face, “I didn’t like it.”

“Then stop doing it.” Baze nuzzles his face into Chirrut’s palm, “please, promise me, Chirrut.”

Chirrut kisses him, but Baze pulls away and frowns, “don’t, I am angry at you, and I will be so until you promise me you’ll stop doing this. Stop running away on mad quests. Tell me, and we’ll go together, like we’re meant to.”

“What if-” 

“You’re a selfish man”, Baze interrupts and traces the shape of Chirrut’s dry lips with his thumb, “I love that about you, but. Not like this. You can’t expect me to be happy with you running off into danger, when you will not accept the same thing for me. You know this.”

“...I do”, Chirrut sighs and licks his lips, “I do.”

“So?”

“I promise to tell you when there’s danger”, Chirrut says, and brushes some hair from Baze’s face, “I promise not to run off without telling you”, he kisses Baze’s ear, “I promise not to make you worry like this again, Baze, my Baze. I’m sorry.”

Tension seeps from Baze’s shoulders, and he seemingly exhales all air in his lungs in an enormous sigh as he kisses Chirrut’s mouth.

“I love you”, he breathes in Chirrut’s air, their faces pressed together, “I love you. I love you.”

“What would they say if they saw you” now, Chirrut whispers, as they lay down on the dirty stone floor, “all those imperialists who are afraid of you. The large man with the larger gun, ready to obliterate on sight, is actually the softest, sappiest fool in the world.”

“If I’m a fool then so are you, I’ll have you know, it was you who asked me to marry you.”

“I did”, Chirrut smiles, “do you regret saying yes?”

“No”, Baze says without thinking at all, and strokes Chirrut’s arm “but if you make a widower of me, I’ll bring you back from the dead, divorce you and then kill you.”

They’re quiet, then Baze speaks again:

“I love you more than life itself, but I will hate you if you ever run off like that again.”

“I won’t.” Chirrut says.

He doesn’t make a habit of speaking falsely to Baze just to appease him, and he never has- but at that moment, the truth comes to him and he is suddenly sure, inexorably as the turn of the axis of Jedha, that it is a lie. 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not actually a writer at all per se, i just draw fanart and do comics, but i had this script for a comic lying around and i didn't have energy to draw it, so i re-wrote it into a short fic and kind of, character/relationship study i guess. i hope you enjoy anyway! 
> 
> also the ur breaking my heart thing is absolutely taken from padme's kinda awful line from rots but you know what? i liked that like. i thought it was cool. shoutout to that line.


End file.
